


Reinventions

by Patripatan



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drunk Lestrade, Fluff, Greg Lestrade is confused, M/M, Predator Alien Lizard People of Holmesia, Prosthetic Limbs, Rocks Fall Everyone Dies, Sherlock is Not a Virgin, Teen Goth, Virgin Sherlock, Wangst, therapy kittens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-01 14:49:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5209943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patripatan/pseuds/Patripatan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A continuation of Dance the Ghost with Me, where my head canon decided that Lestrade was once a teenage goth, because that totally makes sense.</p><p>Lestrade is pulled into a stupid bet of Donovan's, gets drunk and listens to his old albums, wonders what happened to him, and makes a 4 am phone call to The Prat. Stuff happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. On the Importance of Proper Armour

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a personal challenge to write and post daily. Un-betaed, so if you see an issue just flag me and I'll correct. :)
> 
> When I started writing this I planned for full on aaaangst and some porn. What you got was fluff and wangst. *shrugs* you'll live.

Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade walks into the office on Tuesday morning to find them all sniggering. Bent over, laughing, teeth bared, eyes gone small and piggy with barely-repressed amusement, Donovan looking particularly feral, like a starving hyena. His stomach twists in fear. Are they laughing at him? What do they know, what do they think they know?

They know nothing, he reminds himself. There is nothing to know. He is, as Mycroft has told him on several occasions, an exceedingly dull man with an exceedingly dull life. He is also an imbecile prone to nervousness and fumbling when flustered, Mycroft observed once, which makes him a tool only to be used when no other is available. Greg grits his teeth. Typical bloody Holmes, he'd said it to Greg's face and not even changed his expression. As though he'd not been telling a man how useless he is, but remarking on a typing error in a transcript, or a flawed brush stroke in a minor painting.

The cackles continue, and Greg feels his neck reddening. "Very professional," he says and drops his case on his desk with a solid and resounding thump. "What is this, a gathering of witches?"

"We're going through notes," Donovan says. "Case notes. Old ones."

"Ah, I see, lack of real work, is it. No crimes in London today. How nice." He knows he's being snippy. He clears his throat. Gruff, they will read it as gruff. All business. "Get back to work."

"Did you know about the virgin thing?"

No. A case—an old one, they said. Is it a clue, some possible small unnoticed element that will lead to the closing of a file, a person saved, a family put out of their misery? Can't be, not with the detectives around him sounding like a troop of baboons that got into the nitrous oxide. Even though they're jaded, they're not that jaded. "What virgin thing?"

"Moriarty," Donovan explains and straightens. Wipes her eyes and smooths her hands down her face, as though to massage her cheeks. "Did you know he called The Freak, The Virgin?"

Greg blinks. He did know, of course. But it was just Moriarty, twisting everything, making people look like fools, exposing them- oh. No. "And what's that got to do with the price of cheese?"

"Well, we now have a bet running." Donovan takes a breath, restoring her professionalism. She glances at her colleagues. "I have ten quid on this. We think you're the man to find out."

"Find out what?" He does this, he knew he did this even before it was pointed out to him by Mycroft. That he repeats things; stalls, to play for time. He doesn't have the lightning quick mind of the Holmes' brothers, he needs space to think or else it all comes out in a blundering mess of words that barely string together into anything resembling a cogent sentence. Which is why Sherlock assumes him to be an idiot. Of course. In comparison, he supposes he is an idiot.

"Just ask him for us."

"Ask Sherlock if he's a virgin?" He laughs once, harshly. Pictures the look he'll get and finds he can't actually imagine what Sherlock's response to that will be. "We are none of us twelve, Donovan. Go do something."

"Was waiting for you."

"Well show a bit more bloody incentive next time and do stuff before I get here."

 

#

Greg has always gone to the pub after work. Not because he particularly likes the pub, but he knows to have one beer with his team is an element of bonding that helps to make them all work better together. It's almost like networking, except with people he already knows. He is networking, he is making nets. Making webs, he tells himself as he buys one round. It's Wednesday, he always buys the round on Wednesday. He closes his eyes and for a moment he pictures them all bound, wrapped in spider silk, little corpses stuck to the web, waiting to be eaten.

He's never fooled himself that it's his web. His network. Greg takes his change when the barmaid puts it down, and squints. Price must have gone up, or she's given him the wrong change. Greg's about to say something when the barmaid sighs, and taps one finger on the beer pulls. The price has gone up. He nods and gathers the pint glasses instead, pressing cold class to cold glass, his fingers wet and spread.

The others take their drinks as he sits, and Greg is left with his Fuller's vintage. The same bitter he's been drinking since he started working at the Yard. He'd been trying to reinvent himself again. No more idiot mooning about after Jonathan. No more skinny boys in long black coats, no more supercilious twats with long fingers who make effortless deductions about how useless and normal and boring he is. He's over that. So over that. Look, all nicely grown up. Tailored clothes, a good haircut, a proper job that people (well, most people) respect. He drinks grown-up beer, and takes grown-up holidays where he gets grown-up suntans instead of trying to be pale and interesting. He has a marriage of sorts and a flat in London.

Okay, bit of a downgrade there, but it was better to move closer to work, and there's no way in hell he could afford a house in central London. He can't even afford a flat, to tell the truth, but it's a small place and he doesn't have much stuff here. It's all back at the house. She's keeping the house, of course. That's how normal divorces work, he thinks. All very normal.

He drinks, swallows rich and foamy head, waits for the perfect smooth bitterness to fill his mouth, fill his stomach.

"So." Donovan crosses her legs neatly, leans back. She's drinking gin and tonic. It's a change, Greg muses. Means she has a new partner. He hates knowing that; maybe the brothers are rubbing off on him.

He flushes and stops that thought dead. "So?" Another sip. A good long swallow. He feels tense, he always feels tense unless he's alone. His back itches.

"Have you asked him?"

"Are we talking about Sherlock?" Greg drawls. He is suave. Or at least he has worked quite hard at it and he can do a passable imitation when he has his wits about him. "Of course he's not a virgin, there was that Irish one."

"What—Moriarty? Have you been sharing Anderson's crack pipe?" Donovan grins. "That was one of the theories—not his—but when he was running that mental group. One of them decided that James Moriarty and Sherlock-"

Greg winces, holds up one hand. "The Irish _woman_ , the one from the wedding. Went to the papers and everything." He does not want to think of James Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes, that's just, just wrong and disturbing and he has his limits. If he opens his mind to this kind of thing it will stick there and never go away and how the hell will he be able to act like a rational, non-idiot around Holmes the Younger again? Again? Who is he fooling here, not himself that's for sure."The woman," he repeats, bringing up her face, pushing it over the idea of that _other._ "Janine." Hawkins. He'd filed it away when she'd started showing too much interest. He has a file. Well, not a file. Just a list.

Clarke, who has joined them for Wednesday drinks because Wednesday is darts, adds, "All that stuff about the hat—kinky roleplay, you owe me, Sally." He holds out his hand, waiting.

"Nope." She drinks her gin fast, gets up. "I'm getting another, anyone want?"

Greg shakes his head. One is his limit, unless it's a weekend, and then he is allowed a lager at midday. More than that and it would just be sad. He'd turn into his father, and that's as depressing as being Mycroft's useless tool to be manipulated only when there is nothing else.

When she gets back she has a full round, even another pint for Greg. It's awkward, because now he'll have to drink it. It's that or weird, embarrassing explanations and it's called AlAnon for a bloody reason, so he doesn't make a fuss, just smiles tightly and accepts his second beer with as much grace as he can. He drank the first too fast, that was the problem. He'll drink this one slower. 

"You could ask John," Donovan says. "He's moved back in, left his wife to go live with Sherlock again-" Then she blinks, as if realising what she's just said. "Oh my god, okay, yes." She pulls out her wallet, square and black and manly because goddamit, Sally Donovan has so much to prove. She pulls out a ten pound note and looks at it sadly, before passing it over to Clarke who grins and does a mocking little half-bow from his seat, then tucks the note away.

Greg watches this, decides that everyone he works with is an idiot, snorts derisively and downs the dregs of his pint so he can get started on the new one. John and Sherlock. That's idiotic. They're. No. Very badly suited. Just friends. Oh god, he thinks. Mycroft is right. I am an imbecile.

 

#

 

He has a lot more than two pints. He remembers mocking John and Sherlock for being lightweights, but here he is, back home, with a fucking cheap plastic 2 litre bottle of cider from the off-license, playing sad music.

Well, saddish-angry music. He didn't even play this record when he got served the papers. That had been civil. Grown up. He had nodded and signed and gone on with sorting what he needed to take with him. Whatever this is he's doing now, it is not fucking grown-up. He's wallowing, for god's sake. This is pathetic. He is pathetic.

 _"Pain looks great on other people_ ," he mumble-slurs along. " _That's what they're for."_ Takes a drink. He's poured the cider into a cup, because fuck he will not drink this straight from the bottle, he is not seventeen. " _I can love my fellow man_ ," he sings, off key . " _But I'm damned if I'll love yours_."

The flat is a fucking pit. Normally it's clean, tidy, or as tidy as anything can be, when all your belongings are in cardboard boxes sealed with brown tape. He's pulled everything out, disembowelled the remnants of his life, all the things he was quite sure he was done with. He found actual photographs, a collection of real photographs made on real film taken with a real camera. Most of them were stuck together, which, Greg concedes after looking at a few, is probably a blessing. God, he looked so... young. And thin. How had he ever been that thin? It was unreasonable. It was Sherlockian, almost, which is possibly even more disturbing. He vaguely remembers that he was probably that thin because he'd lived on cheap black tea and Strongbow and Pot Noodle and he'd probably had some kind of illness because Man Cannot Live On Pot Noodle Alone. He shoves the stuck-together photos out of the way and pulls out the thing he'd really been looking for.

The Coat.

It smells distinctly rank. It smells like a nineties club at five am. It smells like the Slimelight, like trying to pull EBM girls because they looked fitter than the Faux-Victorian ones, it smells like Alice pressed against the wall, it smells like trying to buy acid from a shifty wanker in the toilets, it smells like stumbling to the Angel as the sun rose, it smells, frankly, like shit.

He fondles it. Long, once-black. He'd bought it at an Oxfam for a fiver, biggest bargain he'd ever got. Greg shrugs it on, stink and all. It's too tight now, like he's bloated. Become a sausage in a too small skin. Dammit. How had he go so...not fat, he wasn't fat, but so not-skinny.

He should throw this away. Put it out for the homeless, on top of the bin. One of Sherlock's network could be ambling about in Lestrade's old coat by morning, and be all the better for it. He doesn't need it.

Lestrade gives up on the cup and drinks the cider from the plastic bottle. The cd has ended and he can't be bothered to go change it. There's a click, and a whirr and he hears the discs revolving. How many bloody albums did he put on, Greg wonders. He's surprised the cd player even works. It was one of the things she didn't want, so he took it and let her keep the very expensive sound system he'd installed in the tv room. He let her keep most things, because it had seemed easier to just slough everything than sit there fighting over the bones, picking the carcass clean.

Oh god, he's maudlin now. Well, that's crap. He used to get like this before too, remembers actually crying at the bar once, before one of his friends took pity on him and took him back home on the tube. He thinks he might have been tripping just a little that night, because he'd actually said something to his friends about wondering what Jonathan would taste like. Or maybe he never said that, maybe he dreamed he said it, because it was never mentioned after.

So long ago. He'd lost track of them all, though a few years ago he'd looked for Jonathan on Facebook, just to see what had happened, how he'd turned out. If he'd stayed thin and beautiful and well, Byronic. He hadn't.

Greg fumbles for his mobile, dials without thinking. The phone only rings once before it is answered.

"Life or death," Sherlock says.

"Sorry, what." _I've dialled the wrong number_ , Lestrade thinks, _except I didn't_. He makes a sound that is not a giggle. He definitely clicked the icon labelled The Prat.

"It is 4 am. You never call, always text. So, life or death?"

"Drunk," says Lestrade.

"Ah." A moment's silence. "My brother mentioned that you may be prone to occasional lapses, that it would possibly worsen now. She's left the P.E teacher, if that helps."

"Fuck you, Sherlock," Lestrade says. He's Lestrade now, not Greg. He is also lying half-naked on the floor of his shitty apartment, wearing a coat that is two sizes too small and god, what the fuck is he doing? "Have a question."

"Yes, I would imagine, hence the dawn call."

"Still a virgin?"

The mobile goes to silence, and Greg Lestrade starts laughing. laughs until he cries because it is 4 am and he has to be at work in three hours and he will stink of alcohol and have a hangover that will hit at midday and he hates himself.

"Still here," Sherlock says, unexpectedly. Greg was sure he'd hung up and the sound of that voice startles him into silence. "A trade. A question for a question."

Greg muses on this. For reasons known only to the gods, Sherlock The Prat is still on the phone, and seems almost civil, which is frankly, the weirdest part of this conversation, "Seems fair. Go on then, ask your question."

"You have pictures."

"That's your question?"

An irritated sigh. "No, Lestrade, that was a statement. A declarative sentence. One that states a fact, Had I said 'Do you have pictures?' that would have been interrogative, and yes, a question. I could even have gone with the imperative and said 'give me the pictures.'" There's a brief silence. "Better, yes, give me the pictures."

Greg is lost. "What pictures?"

"That's two questions," says Sherlock. "Bring me the pictures, and I'll answer your question, idiotic as it is."

"I don't even know what pictures," Greg whines. A headache is beginning to clamp his temples. "Oh god, gonna puke."

A sigh. "Water, I believe, is what they recommend. To drink," he clarifies. "Don't drown yourself, I may need you next week."

"Need me for what next week?" Lestrade asks, but he's speaking to nothing, no one, the screen gone to a red handset, The Prat's name already fading. He groans. Fuck it, he's going to call in sick. Spend the day recovering, and then he's going to throw all this rubbish away. It doesn't help to reinvent yourself if you keep the masks and armour you used to wear when you were someone else.

 

#

 

He keeps the coat. Bundles it up into a plastic shopping bag and shoves it right at the back of one of the cupboards. Everything else goes into black bags and gets dumped in the skip at the back of the apartment building.

Everything except three photographs that Greg has managed to unpick from the others. These he puts, stains and bad memories and truths revealed, into an envelope.

Greg will give them to him.

Eventually.


	2. A Conversation about Pictures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What it says on the tin. Lestrade gives Sherlock pictures, they talk about them. Lestrade barely follows along.

It's a few weeks later when Lestrade bumps into Sherlock again. The embarrassment of that drunken idiot night has passed. He won't do that again. His flat is empty. He even got rid of the ancient cd-player. There is a mattress on the floor and right now that's all he needs. It is plain. Because he's a plain man, a simple man, and when you own nothing, nothing owns you.

He tells himself this as he holds out the envelope for Sherlock.

"Ah!" The eyes light up, and a smirk just twitches one corner of his mouth.

It is intensely irritating, Greg thinks. He doesn't know how John can stand it. Actually he does. John has a gun, so the day that Sherlock eventually becomes too much for even John Watson, Scotland Yard will find Sherlock Holmes in a rubbish skip with a hole in his head. And probably still with a supercilious sneer. Greg has never mentioned knowing about the gun. Or about who John has killed with it. He knows that he's not the only blunt tool Mycroft keeps in reserve. "You're looking far too happy," Greg says. "Stop it, it's disturbing."

"The pictures. Knew you'd work it out, given enough time. A lot of time."

Greg just sighs. He doesn't want to ask Sherlock how the man bloody knew about pictures even he'd forgotten about. He just assumes it has something to do with Mycroft, and how both brothers seem to keep a running interest in his life. Presumably in much the same way a dog owner likes to know where their dog is. "Just take them before I change my mind-" but Sherlock is already pulling the envelope out of his hand, and sliding his long thumb into the slit, tearing it open.

They wait a moment, Greg wishing he was not an idiot, and Sherlock frowning as he goes through the three pictures. He goes through them again, lingering over each one. Finally he looks up. "Not quite what I wanted," he says. "Next time I'll specify."

"What-"

"The Crane Case. Really, Lestrade, I thought that would be obvious."

 _Not really,_ Greg thinks. The case is over ten years old. He doesn't even remember Sherlock ever showing interest in it. Possibly he mentioned it to the skull once and assumed Greg got the message via seance.

"Still." And Sherlock definitely smiles as he slides the pictures carefully back into their white envelope, and slips said envelope into his coat. "Useful, in its own way. Mildly entertaining. Eye liner?" He shakes his head, clicks his tongue in mock and mocking disapproval. "Must say, hadn't picked that as your thing. Not sure it really is-"

"Seventeen," Greg snaps. "And an idiot." It's too late to try and get them back now. And really, still an idiot. "There was a trade."

"Oh, yes. Of course. But I'm afraid the answer is no."

"Wait, the answer to the question is no, or no, you're not going to answer?"

"No," says Sherlock, maddeningly himself and Greg clenches his free hand.

"No, because John's moved back in?"

Sherlock manages to look annoyed and delighted at the same time. "What would John have to do with that?" It's practically a purr. Which is both frightening and somewhat arousing. No, not arousing, definitely frightening, because Greg has reminded himself he does not find predatory alien lizard people attractive. That's a little too Lovecraft meets 50 Shades for him. "John, as he has assured many many people," Sherlock continues, still purring, though Greg thinks maybe the Lizard People of Holmesia don't purr, but make delighted warning signals before disembowelling their prey, "John Watson is Not Gay." Sherlock slides forward again, presumably getting ready to open his hinged lizard jaws and decapitate Greg. "And I don't change people's minds for them. I don't have to."

Greg frowns. "No, wait," he says, because that's a lie, Sherlock goes around changing people's minds all the time because he can, and because he likes being right. "You do."

"Do what?" A lizard blink, slow and supercilious.

"I don't even know what we're talking about any more," Greg says. "I have no idea if you've even answered my question, which I only asked because Donovan's running some bloody mini betting pool in the office, by the way, and not because I care. One way or the other."

"Which is why it doesn't matter. One way or the other."

He's almost tempted to throw his coffee on Sherlock. "I am going to strangle you," he says conversationally. Can totally understand Molly Hooper. Those slaps had been a long time coming.

"Oh, please," Sherlock taps his coat pocket. "I have blackmail material. You will do nothing." He steps backward, out of range. "Besides, if anyone's doing any strangling. It will be me. I've the hands for it, after all, and presumably you have the desire."

Greg pauses, a frown just starting, a single perplexed wrinkle. He's not actually sure if Sherlock is flirting, because the idea is preposterous. Also, who promises— _threatens—_ to strangle someone as flirtation. Wait. He's talking to Sherlock, it's best just to accept he has no idea of what's going on. Ever. "I am not into breathplay," he says, and realises his mistake as the words leave his mouth. "I am not. I'm a detective _inspector_ , not a bloody member of bloody parliament."

Sherlock blinks.

"More their thing, isn't it. The kinky stuff." Greg sighs at the look of utter incomprehension on Sherlock's face. John Watson had mentioned this deleting thing, keeps mentioning it on his stupid blog. "Stephen Milligan?" he prompts. "Conservative MP, apparent suicide?"

"Oh." Sherlock shrugs. "Must have been one of Mycroft's. Boring."

"Really, boring? The bit where it turned out to be auto-erotic asphyxiation involving suspenders and electric cord and an orange segment was boring?"

"Oh, definitely Mycroft's." Sherlock doesn't even pretend not to look bored. "I'm making notes, by the way."

"Notes."

"On you. You've proved to be briefly fascinating. All right, not fascinating, but less dull than I had originally assumed. I need to do some research. You seem to have a fixation. Death. Darkness. Strangulation. Auto-eroticism." He shakes his head, curls flying. "Annoying."

"What. I am now annoying for having-" Lestrade could kick himself. "I do not have fixations, you prat."

"Very annoying. Means I missed some vital tell." He waves his hands in the air, as though triangulating where he might have gone wrong, the clue he has missed. "You manage to look very...Man, very dull," he says. "Manly-man doing man things in a manly way, That's your thing." He brightens momentarily. "Ah. Fascinating." Without another word, Sherlock turns on his heel and leaves, coat flying out behind him like he's some kind of super-villain striking a pose.

Greg is sure he does it on purpose. He looks down at the now cold cup of take-away coffee he's holding. "Well, fuck," he says, after a while. He needs a cigarette. He's done quitting things that are going to kill him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stephen Milligan exists. I always found it so fascinatingly British, the whole scandal around his death.


	3. A Glass Knife at Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, Everyone! Only it's a really crappy Christmas actually and Lestrade is moping and obsessing about fluffy bunny sanctuaries, the family dynamics of alien lizard people, and Terry's Chocolate Orange.
> 
> Also, yes, I know, this fic is going off the wangst deep end now. From what I can tell, it's only planning on getting worse, so consider yourself duly warned.

It's not that Christmas at 221B is a tradition of any kind, so it's impossible to miss it, Greg tells himself. You can't miss something as awkward and unnatural as tinsel and wreaths next to the skull and the stuffed and mounted bat. The correct emotional reaction is _Oh, thank god we don't have to go through that again._ Before Sherlock went dead for a bit, and before John attempted to make them all suffer through that strange hell, Greg had made it part of his annual routine to pop round between Christmas Specials to just check that Sherlock was alive. It was, among other things, a good excuse to get away from the house during what felt like endless marathons of Strictly Come Dancing and Royal Variety repeats.

There is only so much torture one sane man can take before he is broken completely.

So he'd drop round, usually find Sherlock doing something about as un-Christmassy as possible (There are nights where Greg wakes with the smell of microwaved human hair in his nostrils and knows he has been dreaming about Christmas again) make a few comments designed to rile The Prat, and then go back home to the wife where he could pick up the phone and say, "He's fine," to the silence on the other end, and that would be that.

Nice cash deposit in his secret account that he has never touched. Pat on the head. Good job, Lestrade. Greg doesn't exactly play errand dog and informant for Mycroft, but he gets paid for it, so he supposes that for all intents and purposes that is exactly what it looks like and what anyone would think if they found out. He has never used the money, it just piles up in the secret account like guilt. Greg has no idea what he's ever going to do with it. Maybe there's a sanctuary for abandoned fluffy bunnies somewhere and he could make a huge donation in Mycroft's name.

And then came John, who brought with him ugly cardigans and rows with chip & PIN machines and day-time telly and god help them all, Christmas parties at Baker Street.

Greg supposes he should be thanking John because the man managed, in his own special demented way, to normalise Sherlock, or at least make him look like a passable attempt at a human being.

He's still not, of course, but he's also become something that Greg can understand. Sherlock is not, and has never been, a high-functioning sociopath. He is a very clever man, who is not as clever as he wishes himself to be. He is also, at the end of a bloody long day, just a man, and between the two extremes of John and Moriarty even Sherlock must have realised it. Greg grins to himself. God, that must grate Sherlock.

So, John. And Christmas, and exchanges of gifts, and in Sherlock's case, sniping at everyone and trying to prove how bloody clever he is, all the time, tearing into people where they are weakest. It's a flaw. Not in a "Sherlock is a shitty parody of a human being" way. But it is a flaw because it reveals too much about Sherlock.

Mycroft knows this. So does Greg. Of course, he doesn't tell Mycroft he knows this because that would defeat the purpose of being a blunt and useless tool. Sherlock is always at war. He goes into every interaction with other people knives already drawn. He is clever and he uses that cleverness as a weapon and he strikes first. Because he is terrified that if he doesn't, someone else will strike him. 

Greg pulls the car in at a likely-looking petrol station. He hasn't bought anything. The shop has a range of terrible last-minute Christmas gifts. The ubiquitous chocolate orange. He wonders if Sherlock is even aware of the flaw. For a very smart man he can be extraordinarily blind to his own failings sometimes. Sometimes. Ha. Sometimes always. Perhaps it began so young that Sherlock doesn't even see his cruelty as anything but a weapon. He holds the knife, so he assumes he's in power, and that's all that matters. He hasn't bothered to check what the knife is made of.

Greg can't get them both a chocolate orange, that's just ridiculous. He decides on one, and a small locally-printed booklet about aeroplanes used during the second war—something probably designed to hook the tourist pound, but it's interesting enough. Will suit the man. Attack and destroy.

No Christmas at Baker street. No Christmas in the house with the wife, and Greg is damned if he was going to that Policeman's Seasonal Dinner that Sally suggested. No. He'll go home for a bit, even if home is no longer the house he grew up in, but a small one-bedroom apartment in Hemel Hempstead of all the god-awful places. His mum said he can sleep on the couch, but it's not like Hemel is far. He'll drive back after the obligatory exchange of gifts, kissed cheeks, the chicken and gravy and the endless cans of Tetleys in front of the telly while his father rants about immigrants and how good it used to be before.

"Jesus," Greg says to himself at the realisation of just how small everything has become. How old, how close to death, and it wouldn't even matter. Wouldn't change anything. He could start over, go to Majorca on his own and have holidays and meet people. He has a good career, he's driving a decent car, he looks good for his age. Divorce and its aftermath are not unusual. People do this all the time and carve out new personal landscapes, re-invent themselves.

Look at John Watson, some big almost-secret domestic and a blow up that seemed to last forever, and now, because it's Christmas, they're giving it another shot. That's what people do. They grow up and behave like adults. Even Sherlock and Mycroft are shedding their lizard skins and pretending to be human and have a family. Be a family.

He can do this.

#

It was all expectedly shitty.

After enough awful television to make a grown man cry, Tesco's mince pies by the gut-churning dozen, a dry roast chicken because, "there's no point in turkey when it's usually just your old man and me, Gregory," and some dismal cracker-pulling, Greg goes outside to smoke his cigarettes and send a text.

He sends it to everyone, pretty much. _Happy Holidays, see you in the New Year - Greg. _Bland and inoffensive and cheery. He knows by now everyone will have seen their gifts, and some might have opened them already. He hopes Sally has, because a gin liquor called Unicorn Tears had been too good a joke to pass on. It's the kind of thing that will get at least a grin and a headshake.__

The text goes on its bland, inoffensive, cheery way to Sherlock and John and Mary and Molly and Mrs Hudson and Anderson and Sally and a host of others. Most of them respond in a similar fashion. 

Sherlock and Mary and John stay silent. 

# 

Christmas ends with a murder, and Greg only finds out the next morning. 

He calls, and of course Sherlock can't answer his mobile, and John doesn't and Mary doesn't and when in desperation Greg calls Mycroft he is told, "If this were a matter for Scotland Yard, I believe we would have already involved your people. As we did not, I think it is safe for you to assume that your assistance is not only unnecessary, it also deeply unwanted." A quick irritated sound. "Do stop calling my brother, Detective Inspector. You are only wasting your time and the finite resources of your tiny mind. Go arrest a petty criminal. Find something to do." This last said with such venom that Greg realises that Sherlock has learned all his knife-play from his older brother. And even Mycroft can't see the knives were made of glass and that everything has finally broken. 


	4. The Devil Wears Many Skins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LOTS AND LOTS OF WANGST.
> 
> I swear I have porn in mind eventually because all roads lead to rimming but no, I start writing and it turns to wangst.
> 
> So: The Aftermath of Moriarty's return, Everyone Dies, Sally and Greg are BFFS and share a therapy kitten.

It's one of those nightmares that are impossible to wake from. Greg doesn't have them often, but when he does he remembers. He can tell himself it's a nightmare, with all the nightmare logic that entails, and still he cannot wake, has to run, has to sweat cold fear and feel his breath rasp bloody in his lungs and still he can't fucking wake.

"Oh," says Sally Donovan, though Greg can't actually see her in the dark. He can hear her over the screaming, just barely. A disembodied voice, echo-tremelo. "Oh," she says again, "That's worse than—he's alive though." She doesn't sound happy about it. "More than can be said for some people."

The room he's racing through has gone black. London is burning. A series of explosions, one by one, no rhyme or reason—well, no.

There is a reason.

The devil is at Greg's back, and he's grinning. Greg runs faster, stumbles in the dark and Sally Donovan says, "Someone should call Anne. Is she still listed as next-of-kin?" A sound almost like a sob. "Oh god, I don't even know if she is. His parents, maybe?"

Moriarty starts laughing, standing over Greg, though he still can't see him, just feel his blackness behind, towering, can hear his madness and rage. "It's so easy, Mrs Watson," he says, "All you have to do is exactly what you were supposed to do...." the sing-song lilt changes to rage," From the beginning!"

Conversational again, "Come out and play," and Greg wonders why he can't get up, why he can't move. He can hear Moriarty's footsteps now. The man meanders around him, shoes clicking against hospital tiles, and the dream smells of bleach and aftershave. Moriarty just keeps walking, leaving Greg behind. He was never important, a fly annoying lions. "Come out, Mrs Watson!" Moriarty yells. "Do what you were told, or another building goes boom."

Sudden pain tears down Greg's left side as the force of the explosion hits.

#

He doesn't wake. Not really. It just feels like drifting through salt water under a black sky. There are voices around him, but they are drawn out and slow and Greg thinks of honey rolling off a spoon, only there are many spoons, all dripping over him and the honey is not gold but black rainbows of oil and the longer they talk the sooner Greg will drown.

The voices come and go. Some he recognises, "Your father would come but it's such a way and he has a dicky heart, you know, but I came, I caught a coach and your friend met me at the station so it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. Never liked London, you know. It's worse now," and some that he does not, talking over him as though he isn't there.

It's very annoying. Makes him feel stupid and slow.

"You are stupid and slow," a voice drawls. Familiar voice. "We all are."

The room smells of cigarette smoke, and dimly, the part of Greg that knows what's going on, that has accepted reality in all its revolting and painful conclusions, thinks _hang on, that's not allowed._

"I'm not supposed to be here," Sherlock says. "Up, wandering about. But you're hardly ambulatory and I'm bore- No." The faint sound of a long indrawn breath, and fainter under it, the crackle of paper burning. "Do you have any idea how hard it was to get anyone to bring me cigarettes?" A long breath out, a sigh of relief. "Had to bribe some old man on the cancer ward to part with his secret stash."

Greg wants to ask what exactly you bribe a dying man with, but decides he'd rather not know the answer. And then Sherlock sticks something in his mouth.

Well more like taps at his mouth with something. Dimly. Greg realises that it's the filter, that it is warm and slightly crushed and this is Sherlock's cigarette, which he is smoking in a hospital ward. 

"This is your last chance," Sherlock tells him. "Take a drag now. I really need to be getting back before someone decides I've gone missing and calls out all of Scotland Yard to go look for me-" He stops again, as though realising how unlikely that is. "Well, not you, obviously. But I'm sure there are hordes of eager little puppy-Lestrades ready to fill the gap. Donovan's probably thrilled."

Greg sucks in the taste of smoke and defeat and uncoiling relief. His feet are cold—bad circulation, he's always had it—and he hurts everywhere but Sherlock is alive and he is alive and they are sharing a cigarette so obviously it all worked out fine in the end.

#

Sherlock doesn't visit him again, and after a few days Greg decides it never happened, because when he finally surfaces from that endless nightmare and is able to sit up and have a semi-lucid conversation with some one he's still pretty heavily morphined, which, when he gets the news, he decides is a good thing.

"How many dead?" he asks Donovan, though he looks to the right, where there is a small window, and he can see part of another wing of the building, and an inch of grey sky. He doesn't look down, or left, or even at Donovan because he hates what he saw on her face.

Pity is such a terrible thing. And if there's one emotion Greg Lestrade had not expected to see on her, it is that one.

"147," she says. "Loads more injured, of course, and some of those deaths happened after the bombings, died in hospital—are you sure you want to hear this?"

He nods, eyes unfocused. The little square of window has blurred into a collection of muted shades, a tiny Mark Rothko, just for him. "Anyone we know?"

A little indrawn gasp. "No-one's told you—you don't remember?"

Two contradictory statements. In fact, Greg does remember, but he's trying very hard not to trust his memory. "So she shot him again," Greg says. "Made rather a habit of it, our Mary."

"She had to, sir -"

"I know." He's piecing it together, little fragments of events pulled out of the blackness and stuck in place, as though all those attacks in London are parts of a charred and ruined map, and he needs to remake it. Moriarty—very much Not Dead, and Mycroft had known all the bloody time, and bombs and children dying. Moriarty had blown up at least two crèches. Babies, Greg thinks. He remembers a baby's arm lying on a piece of rubble. It is a fragment he would like to erase.

But there were others, and all along, Mary Watson at the middle of it, who had to do what Moriarty had wanted her to do from the beginning. Destroy Sherlock.

Shoot John Watson first.

Then shoot Sherlock.

Seems impossible to think now, in the aftermath, Mycroft calling and condescendingly explaining as little as possible, and Greg having to take it all in, that nothing he's seen has been really real. Except it was. Mary and John were in love, there was a baby on the way, Sherlock did care about them both.

And Mary was an assassin and had previously tried to kill Sherlock and god does that extended domestic make a lot more sense now.

"We're keeping things running," Sally says. "While you're away, it's not all falling apart without you." She makes a sound that could be a laugh. "If you were worried about that."

He wasn't, actually. Donovan is damned competent and she'll make a very good DI. She's also loyal, and she commands loyalty from her fellow officers. Greg manages to nod his head and the window comes back into focus. He sighs; it's time to stop pretending. He glances at Sally, at the concern on her face. "Not worried," he says lightly. "Have they officially given you the promotion? Needle them for back pay if they take their time about it. Parkinson can be an arse about most things, but he'll cave on that. Likes to make sure his good people get a living wage."

Then he makes himself look down. He can't actually see that anything is missing thanks to the raised bed and the cover, and right now he can't feel it. Both his feet are cold.

 _Phantom limb sensations._ The surgeon had gone over it with him, talking in a matter-of-fact calm, faint traces of the West Indies lilting her voice. And the nurses were always at it, changing bandages and asking him about things and telling him he needed to keep them informed, that it would take a while for the scar tissue to heal, that he must keep the stump dry and clean and that he would soon begin physical and occupational therapy.

That he would soon be back at work.

"I'm sorry," Sally says, after a while. "Not that being sorry is worth much these days. But I am sorry so many people died, and I am sorry this happened to you, boss."

"Ex-boss," Greg says.

Sally just frowns. After a while she says, "Do you know where you're going to stay?"

"I have a flat," Greg says. "Don't I?"

"Yeah, you do, we kept the rent sorted and everything but it's on the third floor and the lift is always broken-"

"So I move." From the hallway outside comes the rattle of trolleys and the clack-thump of the nurses' sensible shoes. Visiting hour will soon be over and Sally Donovan will go and he'll have time to think about this, and about how he's going to deal with it.

#

"I moved your stuff," Sally says. "Didn't pry, don't worry, just dumped everything in boxes. Put them all in your room."

For once in his life, Greg is absurdly grateful that he is a stickler for cleaning up, especially more so after the divorce. Last thing he'd wanted to turn into was the pathetic slob bachelor slowly burying himself under take-out cartons and semen-encrusted tissues.

And masturbatory evidence had, thank god, long since been tossed in the bin.

 _Your room._ What had started as a bizarre suggestion had mutated into one that made sense, and Greg had found himself agreeing to it. Sally's apartment is ground floor, and she has two bedrooms. "Oyster card takes a beating," she'd explained, "but the rent makes up for it. And I like to read on the tube."

Greg stands on the threshold of the apartment. Small, but wasn't everything in London, and it's still bigger than his and there are no stairs. He has the prosthesis, of course, and a cane that is nothing like John Watson's. His had been friendly and familiar and old-mannish and completely unnecessary. Greg's is an NHS monstrosity that looks like he could kill people with it, and these days, the urge is strong.

His physical therapist has pointed out that he shouldn't rely on the cane, that he needs to use the prosthesis without aid, that the cane is going to make him develop bad habits. But it gives him a sense of security to have it there, always half-worried that at some point the prosthetic limb is going to just...give out. His left hand tightens on the cane grip, and he steps forward just in time to see something small and black shoot past him and almost send him flying.

"Fucking Satan!" Sally yells. "Sorry. He's new. Newish. Newer than you, anyway."

"What the hell was that?" Greg stamps in and peers around the couches. Two very green eyes stare back at him. "A kitten?" He's never considered Sally to be the kind of person to have pets, and especially not for her to be the lonely woman with a cat stereotype.

"Yes, well." Sally points at the couch. "Sit. It was after all the bombs and I wasn't sleeping well. So my friend Diane gave me a kitten. She said it would help."

"Help with what?" The idea is deranged. Sally Donovan with a therapy kitten.

"With things. And he's all right. It's nice to know there's another heartbeat in the place, makes it feel less like—well, you know."

He does. Still. "Satan? You named the cat Satan?"

"He was called Tom Thumb, until the little shit shredded my grandmother's antique bloody chaise longue, which is when he got renamed. He has destroyed everything of value. Everything. I was going to change his name to Sherlock-" She pauses, glances at him. "Then couldn't imagine myself yelling 'Sherlock, num-num time!' every day, so I went with Satan."

Greg nods, and for the first time in many months, starts to laugh.


	5. Repeated Behavioural Patterns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Greg takes up a new hobby.
> 
> Possibly the new hobby is Sherlock.
> 
> I'm sorry, I really did intend this to go somewhere else and now I'm afraid I've gone mad and everything has turned to fluff.

Lestrade knows that at some point he's going to have to emerge from the safety of Sally's apartment. Right now he's happy. The room is small, just wide enough for the narrow bed, the closet filled with unpacked boxes and suits he no longer wears. And he has Satan, who has a tendency to come sleep on his stump as though that will somehow magically heal it. He has a place where he can lock the door and shut out everything, and sometimes he does.

And sometimes, more often these days, he doesn't.

They're sitting in the lounge watching some American police procedural that bears no resemblance to reality. Sally keeps throwing unpopped kernels at the screen and commenting on its stupidity. Greg's not sure why she's watching it at all, though he guesses the reason may be that yelling at the screen about how badly the programme gets it wrong is probably better than deep heart to hearts about why Greg Lestrade is not going back to work even though he is officially cleared. Healthy enough to stay on, at any rate, police force can't exactly discriminate. When—if—he returns he'll be back in place. Like nothing happened.

"So you're just never going back to work, then?" Sally says without looking at him. She's just lobbed another kernel at the screen. "Idiot. That's not— _no why are you letting her just look at the body—she's not a bloody policeman. Amateurs._ I mean, you don't have to right away, or maybe you could take on another position on the force."

So much for no awkward questions. Greg has no desire to explain to Sally that just the thought of going back, facing everyone, fills him with a dread so vast and black that it doesn't leave room for air. He has explained this to his therapist, who has suggested ways for him to start fixing his shit. Which were not the exact words his therapist used, but as near as.

He makes a non-committal hum. "Jogging," he says.

"Jogging—and now they're just allowing this woman to _fondle_ the evidence—what do you mean jogging?"

"The usual. Jogging shoes, horrible sweats, pounding about the pavement, one foot in front of the other. I think I'm going to start."

Sally flicks off the television and turns to look at him incredulously in the sudden silence. "You're not even kidding, are you? Well, that's good, I suppose." She glances down. The prosthetic is off for the night, it's not like he can wear it 24/7. "One foot in front of the other?"

"Oh ha ha, Donovan," Greg says. "I'm not about to run off this instant."

She grins in that way that changes her face completely, revealing the side of Sally that Greg has finally been allowed to see more of. The Sally who walks around with Satan on her shoulder, who makes Greg hoover and do the dishes because she hates housework and restricts her culinary endeavours to bowls of cereal. Sally who yells at the telly and stays up reading on the sofa til two in the morning and makes him tea all the time, for no reason. "I think it's good," she says. "The jogging idea."

"So glad you approve," he drawls back, but he's pleased. It is a good idea. And it's not like he can hide here forever. He needs something to channel his frustration into. And his libido, which has started making a come back, ha ha, pun ever so fucking intended.

"It's better than you sitting around moping and smoking outside the window. Not that much chance to give yourself lung cancer if you're running."

"I can smoke and run. I'll have better lung capacity."

"My boss the idiot," says Sally.

"Ex-boss."

"Have it your way then. My ex-boss the idiot."

Satan jumps up onto his left knee and stares at him with those unblinking jade eyes. "What?" Greg says. "Do you have a problem with me taking up a new hobby? No-one to fetch and carry for you, give in to your infernal demands and open doors and rearrange your food bowls? How will you cope?" He runs a hand down the cat's back, feeling it arch its spine against his palm and begin rumbling. "You'll have to amuse yourself," Greg tells Satan, who responds by digging his claws into the flesh above the knee, hard enough to make Greg wince. "Foreign as the concept may be."

"Good to see you're getting on," Sally says. "He can be be your replacement Freak."

#

Jogging turns out to be shit.

Really really shit.

But also good. Not nice, not pleasant, not fun, but good in a way that makes Greg feel like he can actually do something more than sit in someone else's flat and feel sorry for himself. At first he just takes it easy, panting his way around the block. Then a few more, then longer and longer and the days flood past and soon Greg has to map his routes so he doesn't go near anything he doesn't want to see.

Like the ruins of buildings, diggers and cranes and scaffolding and workers listening to the radio on the rooftops.

He builds himself up site by site, and jogs past them, past memories and that awful clinging blackness that is worse than the pain of a missing limb, or a foot that is always cold and there's nothing to be done about it. He runs these things down, outraces them until finally Greg reaches the point where he can jog far enough, and he goes to see where they were buried. It's almost a ten kilometre run, and the rain is falling in a constant frozen drizzle, turning the building and the people and the trees grey and black, and the loudness of London is muted as though the world were wrapped in icy cotton wool.

By the time Greg reaches the two graves he is soaked to the skin, his left leg - real bits and imaginary bits – a solid mass of aches. He has a stitch in one side, his lungs hurt, he can taste blood at the back of his throat and he is both flushed and freezing. Feverish.

Only two graves because where do you bury an unborn infant. Greg pictures them decomposing, the bodies in their coffins turning to withered meat and ivory bones. Like a grotesque Russian doll; one tiny corpse inside a larger.

The headstones are plain. No black marble or clichéd poems. No _do not go gentles_ for the Watsons. Grey stone. Names and dates. For the first time Greg faces what happened and finds he can't breathe. Each indrawn gasp is a knife cut, a slash up the sternum. He bends over, hands on his knees, skin throbbing and waits for his lungs to function like they're supposed to. He's a little dizzy when he stands straight again, wiping the rain from his face in a futile gesture.

"Never took you for the athletic type," Sherlock comments.

Greg turns around so fast he almost overbalances, and wouldn't that be great—falling on his face in the mud and the leaves, covered in sweat and wearing the filthiest air of grey joggers and stinking tee-shirt in London.

"You've adapted well to the use of a prosthesis." He's standing there, like the world didn't pretty much end since the last time they were talking to each other, like months have not gone by, like over a hundred people haven't died. Collar up against the rain, or just to look suave, hair a mess of ringlets, eyes pale and cold.

"Fuck you," Greg says, and lurches forward to put his arms around the man, to hug him close because yes, this is like coming back from the dead. In its own very small way.

"Yes," Sherlock says, uneasily, but he doesn't try to escape the embrace. "All right."

Greg is certain he might even have leaned into it, but that could just be his imagination. Or - well, something else. Desperation. He hugs harder, and Sherlock can bloody well deal with the smell of jogger's sweat and the clamminess of his skin and clothes and everything, because he is owed at least this much.

"Well," says Sherlock, once he is released. "That was," he coughs, "educational. You're having an affair with Donovan, though I suppose not strictly an affair since you're divorced and she's not seeing anyone at present. I knew about your little cohabitation _thing_ but Mycroft kept insisting that it was an arrangement of finances and convenience-"

"The two of you discuss me?" Greg says. "Why am I not surprised. Not that it's any of your business, but you're wrong."

"And you have a cat. A black one, juvenile." Sherlock wrinkles his nose. "Male, you really need to get him neutered as soon as possible."

"Sherlock, will you shut up about the cat." He shoves the man lightly on the shoulder. "I need to get in out of the rain. And I need a cigarette."

"I thought you'd never offer." Sherlock takes his elbow. "Tree," he says, indicating a particularly overgrown one that will provide enough shelter from the mist-like haze of rain to at least allow them to smoke.

They share a cigarette, passing it back and forth between them like two school boys behind the bicycle shed, furtive glances, quick brushes of fingers, the taste harsh and yet somehow cleansing. It rips away all the agitation, letting it curl and smoke like the aftermath of a brush fire. They are silent, huddled with their backs against the moss-stained trunk, shoulder to shoulder. Now that the moment of meeting again at the Watsons' graves has passed, Greg feels like the world has slowed, become hyper-real. He can smell crushed grass and acidic smoke, the onion-tang of his own body odour, and the cool notes of an aftershave he can't name but knows is uniquely Sherlock Holmes. He smells the coat, wool in the rain, feels the bark against his back and the damp running down his temples, the warmth of the human being next to him.

He looks down at the cigarette clamped between his index and middle finger, at the trembling coal. A very slight shake, but Sherlock will have picked up on it. "Now you know what it feels like," he says softly.

"How what feels like."

"When you wish someone wasn't dead." The rain begins to fall harder, rivulets of mud pushing a cruddy mass of fallen and half rotten leaves about. Greg makes a soft snorting sound. "I'm being cruel."

"Yes," Sherlock says. "Not like you."

"You really don't know me," he points out. "Think you do, but you're not always right about everything."

Sherlock breathes out in a low hum. "I know enough to move on," he says. "Unlike you. You act as though this," he shoves a hand against Greg's left leg, against the outside of his thigh, "actually matters. As if it were something important."

"It bloody is to me-" Greg begins, but Sherlock has already pushed away from the tree to face him.

"You think you are of value because of your ability to run. That's not why people keep you around." Sherlock looks genuinely confused. And annoyed.

"Sherlock-"

"And it's not for this either," Sherlock says and his slams his palm against Greg's forehead. The act catches him off guard, snaps his head back to bash against the trunk, but Sherlock barely seems to notice. "You can lose both or either and it makes no difference to your usefulness."

Greg starts laughing, which takes the wind out of Sherlock a bit, who steps back and frowns, his epic rant about the inadequacy of Lestrade's brain and his inability to solve the most basic crimes cut off before it can really get going. "What?" Sherlock says. "What's so funny?"

"It's not funny actually." Greg rubs the back of his head gingerly. "Bloody sore in fact, but you're not the only one who gets to deduce people." Broken glass knives are no good as weapons, not when Greg knows these attacks were going to come, when he has heard them all before—a million variations on a theme, running through his head, and all in Sherlock's condescending voice. "Idiot," he says and catches Sherlock's sleeve, pulling him close enough that he can feel hot breath against his face. He lets go and before Sherlock can move away, catches him behind the neck in the crook of his arm. "Idiot, idiot, idiot," he says.

"You or me?"

"Bit of both," Greg says, and hugs him again, a stranglehold that he is not going to release, no matter how much the lizard-alien might beg for mercy. He turns his head to taste Sherlock's neck - soap and salt and rain - and Sherlock stands very still.

"Are you certain?" Sherlock says, as Greg bites gently, hiding his face away from everything. 

"Yes." It doesn't even matter what he's really asking, Greg thinks, because the answer would stay the same. "Your place though, I'm not explaining this to Donovan or Satan."

"Satan is the cat," Sherlock says slowly, just before Greg kisses him, bites at his lower lip and then pulls back, grinning.

"Yes, Satan is the fucking cat," Greg says. Sherlock tastes like the inside of a broken thermometer, like splinters of glass and pooling mercury. A strange fantastic sense of glee is rising in him, of madness and mending. "Get a cab, you're paying because I am not exactly making bank here, and I want breakfast and coffee in the morning-"

"Mrs Hudson usually makes tea-"

"Guess you'll have to learn how to use the machine then," Greg says, still grinning. "Consider it part of your formal education in how to pass for human; your Lizard Rulers will be very proud."

"What?"

"Hah." Greg pulls Sherlock past the graves towards the high black palisade fencing and the wide open gates. "Just hail the bloody taxi already, prat."


	6. Replacement Parts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I fully intended to write smut when I started this, and then I realised how boring it is to write and how much more interested I am in the stuff that happens around the smut. The thoughts and the stupid sounds and the indignity and the chatter.
> 
> But, there is something resembling sex in this chapter.
> 
> And an ending.

There's an edge of disconnection and electricity inside the vehicle, as though the spaces between all the molecules in the world just widened and Greg looks out the window of the cab and sees London for the first time again. The rain blows across the street in fits and starts, flashes of open sky threaded through the clouds above, the people bright as finches, shop displays flaring golden halos of light and warmth.

Next to him, Sherlock sits in silence, as though he's contemplating this turn of events, trying to fit together all the clues to solve a mystery that isn't even there.

"It's not hard," Greg says.

A sideways glance, just a flick of eyes and a suggestion of a smirk. "Patience, Lestrade."

"I mean," Greg thumps him soundly above the elbow, enough to make Sherlock wince, "it doesn't take a genius to work this one out, you'll get there."

"I had already picked up on your hero-worship, of course, not surprising considering—ow!"

Greg nods. He feels dizzy with exhaustion and euphoria. "Carry on, I can hit you all day, but the next one will really hurt."

Sherlock rubs at his arm and glares back. "Fine. The pictures."

"Bit of a give away, yeah?" Greg laughs, tilts his head back to look at the cab roof because it makes confession easier. "His name was Jonathan. I used to follow him everywhere. Might have a made a twat of myself, come to think." He risks a quick glance left, sees Sherlock looking at him, full mouth just slightly tightened in concentration, brow marked by a single point of focus, as though Sherlock is committing him to memory, making space for him inside that brilliant mind.

"So this is perfectly fine," Sherlock says as the cabbie swerves them around a tight bend at a ridiculous speed, and almost runs over a motorcyclist. The movement throws them together, Sherlock half-crashing in to Greg. "All very normal for you, good. Saves us a scene later."

"Yes it does rather." Greg puts one hand on the back of Sherlock's neck, fingers under the curls, pressing gently into the scalp. "So stop worrying." If anyone has anything to worry about, it's himself, Greg thinks. He's the one who has to get naked. Well, both of them do, though technically he supposes that they don't, they could do anything, they could sit and have bloody tea and biscuits instead, but naked and sweaty and slippery sounds far more appealing.

Except for the leg. Or lack thereof. He sighs and tightens his grip, massaging the occipital bone and Sherlock moans slightly, hardly loud enough to hear. There is nothing particularly sexy about taking off a prosthetic, unless Sherlock is a lot weirder than Greg has previously imagined. And he smells like someone who just did a 10k run, for some reason.

"I'm showering first," he says. Another problem. All his stuff is back at the flat. His crutches and the plastic stool Sally keeps in the shower just for him. The whole process is going to be an exercise in humility. "Alone."

"How boring."

"I'd like to keep a grip on what's left of my dignity," Greg says. He recognises the buildings here, they're close to Baker street, and a wrench passes through his gut, a fierce twist of sudden fear or panic. What the fuck is he actually doing? But the cab is pulling up, and Sherlock is paying, and hauling Greg out and it's too late to back out. He's been jogging sans mobile and wallet, not expecting to do anything more than run himself into exhaustion and back home to the cat.

Greg follows Sherlock up the small flight of stairs, clinging to the handrail. He's not great with steps yet, even though he knows it would have been worse if he'd lost more than his lower leg, at least the knee means he has mobility of some kind.

"There's nothing dignified about sex," Sherlock points out as they step inside the familiar biohazard that is 221B Baker Street. The smell is appalling, sulphur and decay. Someone's been experimenting again.

"Oh and you'd know," Greg counters. He tries not to breathe. John's chair has gone, he notices. An uninterrupted view to the kitchen. A mini-cityscape of glass test tubes and chemistry paraphernalia has taken over the table. "How much do you let people see, of you, I mean. Not skin, but the... rest of it. The important stuff."

"Enough," says Sherlock. "Every person has a limit. No shower, I'm afraid. Bath's in there." He points to the little hall, and there, past the bathroom door is the open mouth of Sherlock's bedroom. An invitation both threatening and inescapable.

"Uh, yeah, thanks." Greg shoulders past and goes in to the bathroom, closing the door behind him, and once Sherlock is out of sight, he stands motionless, chest heaving. All right, so he's gone mad. That's fine. That's perfectly fine. He can negotiate this. He can strip himself and go into battle wounded and defenceless and isn't that in itself a kind of armour. Greg plugs the bath, turns on the taps and begins the process of shedding his accoutrements. His symbols of Lestradeness. He sits on the edge of the bath and massages the stump briskly. He has a whole routine he is supposed to go through, all the checks, but he is perfunctory now, just cleaning the socket and giving the stump and scars a brief once over. It never feels like part of him. In his head, he is checking this for someone else. Another Greg in a different timeline, where the world went wrong.

Alone, he is careful, not wanting to do something stupid and end up slipping and having to yell for help, or crawl on hands and knees to get what he wants. He's finally lying in warm water, having soaped off, when there is a brief knock.

"Do you mind?" asks Sherlock through the door.

And he probably should, but on the other hand, the man is going to see him in all his glory sooner or later, and at least this way he knows what he's getting. "Sure, go ahead." Greg glances down - at least his prick is fine. Always has been. A simple creature, it knows the score. A twitch. "Idiot," he tells it, softly.

The door swings open and Sherlock walks in, gives Greg a cursory once over and nods. "Everything we need appears to be intact."

Greg starts laughing and wonders if he can drown himself in the bath, and how long it would take. He's naked and missing a bloody leg, and Sherlock, in shirt and trousers, coat thankfully shucked, is _observing_. Is being Sherlock, which is to say, being such a prat that it becomes completely normal and not prat-like at all, because that same intensity and curious piecing together of human tells would happen any way, bloody leg or not. "So glad you approve," he says.

"I brought this, thought it might help." Sherlock leans John's old cane against the edge of the tub. "It's not as though it is currently in use-" He swallows, flushing suddenly and Greg knows this is going to be fine.

#

 

It's not falling onto beds of strewn rose petals. Nor is it fuck machines and enemas and watersports.

It's somewhere comfortably between the two, with the usual amount of negotiation and awkward bits. Like explaining that he'd prefer Sherlock tops, which caused some initial flustered confusion. "Not every time," Greg says. "I'm all for turn about is fair play. This time." He has one hand around Sherlock's cock, hand around heat, thumb sliding over the slit, smearing pre-come around the foreskin to make pushing it back easier. His own prick is spit-wet and flaccid now, dragging against skin. A spark between pain and pleasure, waiting out the aftermath. It didn't take long, which was hardly surprising since this is the closest he's come to actual sex with an actual human in about a year.

They're lying on Sherlock's bed, both naked, which was a process and fucking half because apparently Sherlock had to fold and hang everything which makes no bloody sense when the rest of his apartment is a tip.

"Sherlock, seriously, just fuck me." He knows his own body, knows how long things will take, and what is wanted, needed. And he's not some blushing virgin uncertain of how to ask. He will ask, and Sherlock will say yes or no.

"You're certain though. You _were_ married to a woman."

"Yes," Greg says slowly and wonders if he should explain the process of pegging or if this is one of those irrelevant details Sherlock has heard of and then deleted for being too boring. "For several years. It's not all missionary positions and carefully draped sheets, you know. The wife had a bigger cock than yours." He doesn't add that it has been a very long time; Sherlock can work that out for himself, bright boy that he is. "I'm not going to break." He shifts over on to his left side, which means no more kissing, no more tasting his own come in Sherlock's mouth, bitter and familiar at the same time, but he's not exactly up for acrobatics and he does not want to see the stump in the air, thanks all the same.

The sheet smells of laundry powder and musk, of the faint crispness of lube, the heady rich mix of sweat and body odours and chemicals and sexual fluids that make sex what it is, that animalistic moment where humans choose exposure and all that pain it can bring, real or imagined. Physical or emotional. Offerings of the heart for a promise of pleasure. Greg clenches a hand in the sheet and pushes back, an invitation, and then Sherlock is behind him, running fierce kisses up from the knob of his spine, along his neck, under his jaw. Claims and marks. They work together, slow, and finally Sherlock is bollocks deep and Greg is half-hard again, pushing back, revelling in the sounds, in the gasps, and the pull of skin, even the sticky-slipperyness of lube - the way it always makes him feel like he's somehow wet himself - in the heat against his back and thighs, long hand against his side, running fingers down to pull at his cock, the other pressed against the back of his head, tugging at his hair.

After, Greg feels like he has lost all ability to move. Lies there, with Sherlock half on top of him, and laughs into the mattress. The sheet has half-disappeared, and there is a pillow hanging off the edge of the bed. Greg tips it. Sherlock shifts, and Greg grabs his forearm. "Don't move yet," he says. I'm going to sleep."

"I can't just lie here all afternoon and evening," Sherlock points out. "I'm filthy. And I have cases."

"Nnghh." Which is all the response Sherlock deserves, Greg thinks. He's turned to lead. "Phone."

"What?"

"If you're going to get up, I need your phone."

The warm, sticky weight disappears, and Greg pulls the duvet up over himself as an inferior replacement. He's muzzy-headed, content. A moment later Sherlock pads back into the room, now gowned, and holding out his mobile. 

"What are you doing?" he asks as Greg takes it and thumbs across the screen.

"Calling the papers, obviously. Need to make money somehow." Greg flicks through Sherlock's contact list. "You bastard. Do you actually have the number of every person in Scotland Yard?"

"Just some." Sherlock shrugs. "The necessary ones." Greg checks and Sherlock sighs in irritation. "Of course I have yours."

"Of course." And Sally Donovan's desk number, which is more than useful. Greg didn't really want to be passing messages on third hand. He waits for the phone to start ringing, for Sally's curt tones, the unconcealed annoyance.

"It's me," Greg says. "Just letting you know I won't be in tonight, probably catch you tomorrow sometime."

"Where are you?"

"Out, some place." He leans over the edge of the bed and rescues the pillow to shove it behind his back. "I'll let you know properly when I've worked it all out."

"You will not," says Sherlock. "Not to Sally Donovan."

"Pulled some bird, have you?" Sally says. Behind her is the sound of the office, and the buzz of it pulls at him, makes him want.

"Something like, yeah."

A snort. "Good for you, boss, and now, the rest of us have to get back to work."

He doesn't correct her use of boss. Not this time. "Yeah, cheers." Greg hands the mobile back to Sherlock, who is waiting, hand out, palm up, deep in thought.

"The stairs won't be a problem," Sherlock says. "You can't move into John's room anyway because I've put all his stuff there so it'll just be the one flight."

"He's not coming back, Sherlock," Greg says quietly, gently but Sherlock waves a hand in his direction.

"I am aware of that, I'm also aware that you currently own very little so the move shouldn't be complicated."

"You twat," says Greg, "You can't just move me in like a replacement...." _John._ "Skull."

"You're not a replacement anything-"

And Greg makes the connection. "Meow." he says blandly. "Meow, feed me now, open a window, no, close a window, no, open a window, this food isn't good enough, I want more that's exactly the same, purr-"

"Are you high?" Sherlock says. "What have you taken, when did you take it? Is that what this-"

"I'm not high, you wanker." Greg frowns. "And you're not high, I know Mycroft's been keeping tabs, has the police force watching you." 

"Yes, very clandestine. Sometimes I meet with random dealers just to annoy them. Doesn't explain why you have started babbling incoherently-"

"I'm your therapy kitten." He shifts down the bed, leans his head back and sighs in contentment. "Every predator alien lizard invader needs one."

"Hmmm." says Sherlock. And then, after a long time has passed and Greg is half-asleep. "I accept."


End file.
